Broken Things
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: In the pause between disasters, in a city on the verge of destruction, a beautiful princess seeks refuge in the arms of a devoted young knight. Except nothing and no one quite turn out to be the stuff of gauzy fairy tales. Finn/Raquesis and some other stuff besides, M-rated for sexual themes. Read the warning, please.
1. Chapter 1

**Broken Things**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Warnings: This contains depictions of m/m and m/f sexual activities. It also contains references to sibling incest and flashbacks to a relationship of dubious consent because of age and authority imbalance. Not all of these acts are presented as romantic or positive, but they are most certainly part of the story.

* * *

_We take our empty hearts and fill them up with broken things_

_to hang on humming wire like cheap lamps down a dead-end street_

_Leonster, 761_

Glade ran his fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to tame the cowlick at the back of his head. He aimed a crooked smile in Finn's direction.

"See you later."

And with that he was gone, after checking one more time that his trousers were done up.

Finn lifted his head, waiting until he heard the _click _that indicated that Glade had closed the door properly. Then he let his head fall back to the mattress and lay there in a fog until the sticky mess across his thighs irritated him enough that he decided to clean up. Once he'd taken care of himself and dealt with the bedclothes, Finn raised the window halfway to freshen the air in the room. Late summer damp and the scent of linden trees flooded in through the gap and Finn stood there a moment, looking down into the shadows of the quiet street. A scattering of fireflies glowed in the dark below but a different sort of glimmer at the edge of his vision caught Finn's attention.

The house three places down from his own had a light in the window. Finn knew the previous owner to be dead- killed in the Yied along with Prince Quan- and the poor man's family had vacated the house shortly thereafter. Now Finn could see a distinct yellow glow from what he took to be a bedroom.

He ought to have been relieved the house was occupied again, but as Finn looked upon the one bright window, he had only the feeling that something odd and strange was about to happen.

-x-

"I heard there's some foreign princess at court," Glade said the following day when they met up in the mess hall for dinner. "I think she's someone you know, Finn. I think her name's Raquesis?"

"Lady Raquesis?" he repeated, as though he'd misheard or Glade had misspoken.

"Yeah. Is she the beautiful one?" As he talked, Glade methodically mashed the beans, greens, and bacon on his plate into one solid mass. "You said one of those princesses was like a goddess come to life."

"Oh. That was Briggid."

His memory placed her forever on the rock-strewn shore of a northern beach, golden hair streaming in the wind and a strange glow like mist at daybreak enveloping her.

"Briggid. Okay. Well, this one's Raquesis."

"She's also very beautiful," Finn said. All princesses were, of course, but in the case of Raquesis- and Ayra, and any other princess Finn had known in Lord Sigurd's army- it was actually true. "Please stop; that looks nauseating."

"Ah, come on. You know it tastes better this way," Glade said as he used chunks of bread to sop up the ugly streaked paste that remained of his dinner. Finn looked away, though he knew that Glade's revolting dinner likely wasn't the reason that he felt a sudden lack of appetite for his own meal.

Finn hadn't heard the name of Lady Raquesis in long months, and he'd done his best not to think of her or Lady Briggid or any of the rest. He'd assumed Raquesis and Briggid to be dead. He'd thought all of them must surely be.

"Did anyone happen to say why Lady Raquesis is here in Leonster?"

"I don't know for sure but what I _did_ hear is that she's asking for asylum."

It made sense. With Agustria in ruins, Isaach and Verdane under Grannvale's control, and Silesse said to be the next target of Grannvale's army, there wasn't any other likely place to go.

"Are you all right? You're shivering," Glade was saying.

"I was only thinking that we're not a large kingdom, and yet out of all the lands in Jugdral, we're nearly all that's left besides Thracia and the Grannvale Empire."

He almost hoped the rumors about Grannvale marching on Silesse were true. If the empire found itself stuck in the mountains and snows of the far north, it would keep their attention off Leonster just a little while longer.

-x-

Six hours later, Finn was crossing a courtyard on his way from the royal apartments to the castle gates when a group of apprentice knights returning to the barracks blocked his path. Finn waited as they passed- ten of them, lined up five and five, with not a one of them yet of the age to fight. He wondered if they'd be pressed into service regardless if the tension with Thracia erupted into all-out war. They probably would, he decided, as the last two apprentices, the pair of girls, went by him. Though his path now lay clear, Finn watched the girls for a few moments longer. One had dark hair clipped short, almost like a boy's, and the other had light blue hair pulled back in a jaunty tail. His mother might have looked like that girl once, back when she was in training to be a bow knight.

Finn wondered if those two apprentices would live long enough to become knights, or if they'd marry and go elsewhere before they finished training. At least one of the girls who'd aspired to be a knight because of Lady Ethlyn had already gone home, crushed by the death of the princess. If the brutality of Thracia's dragon knights toward women hadn't been clear before, it was sickeningly so now-

"Finn!"

He thought he knew the voice. Low-pitched but shifted oddly high from emotion, biting off his name in a way that seemed _foreign_. He recognized the sound.

If not for the conversation with Glade that day, Finn would have been stunned at the sight of her. As it was he felt a passing shock; her black dress bled into the lengthening shadows of the courtyard so that her face and pale hair seemed to hang for a moment in the air, disconnected from any substantial body. A ghost, or a savage trophy, he thought, some terrible remnant of the ambush at Belhalla.

But he heard the tap of her shoes on the cobblestones and knew her to be real even before she drew so close that he could every breath.

"Finn! It really is you."

"Yes, Lady Raquesis. Only me."

And so there they were, staring down at each other in the dusk. Just as Lady Briggid belonged in Finn's mind to that distant nameless beach, his thoughts had enshrined Lady Raquesis in the splendid city of Agusty with its broad avenues and lush gardens. To have her here in the mundane courtyard of Leonster's stronghold was akin to having a visit from some exotic creature from a fairy-story- a talking bird, or a gryphon, or even one of the goddesses from the Miracle at Darna. That last thought bordered on sacrilege, so Finn decided to keep his thoughts on birds and gryphons. The jet beads that glittered on her dress and her mourning veil counted as some kind of plumage, he thought. They made for a strangely exuberant show of grief.

Still, he thought he saw a true sadness in her brown eyes, highlighted by the patch of fading sunburn across each cheekbone.

"Only you?" she repeated. "Well, it's a relief to find _somebody_."

"My apologies, princess. I should have showed a greater regard for the losses you've suffered."

"Oh, you don't have to start things this way," she said, and she sounded a little younger then, the way she had in Agusty before everything unraveled. "We both know what's happened."

"Ah." Though he didn't know- the broad outlines, yes, but not the details. Perhaps it didn't matter.

She seemed puzzled by him now, focused on Finn's clothes and not his face; Finn glanced down at the orange splash across the shoulder of his coat.

"Lord Leif did not enjoy his supper very much."

"Oh," she said, and she smiled at him then, though the sadness didn't leave her eyes. "You're with him each day, aren't you?"

"Yes." Finn hoped she didn't take note of the moment of hesitation before admitted to her that his duties as a knight now involved spending all day within the castle with an infant instead of fighting on the front lines.

"I would like to see him some time," she said now, and the smile deepened, seemed more genuine.

"I'm sure that could be arranged." Was he supposed to make those arrangements? Finn wasn't certain, and the combined weight of all the uncertainties about Lady Raquesis and her status, what she wanted and what anyone could provide her, brought back that uneasy feeling he'd experienced when looking at the new light in the window three houses from his own. "Princess, do you need an escort back to your residence?"

"I think I have one," she said.

"Do you? Oh." For she'd placed her small black-gloved hand upon his arm and he felt quite foolish.

Of course Lady Raquesis proved the new owner of the place three houses down. Of course she was.

-x-

"I got to see your princess," Glade said over dinner two days thereafter. "She's _tiny_. I don't think she's any taller than _you_ were when you left with Prince Quan. Are you sure she's a Master Knight?"

Finn weighed which piece of bait to take before making his reply.

"She's one of the most capable fighters I've known," he said, and hoped his tone left no room for doubt on Glade's part. Finn then moved to change the subject. "Are you coming over tonight?"

"Sure. Want to have a drink beforehand?"

"Fine by me."

"Good. I'll meet you at the White Horse at eight, then."

Finn nodded his agreement and wished that Glade, pleased by the prospect of drinks and company, wouldn't want to ask anything more about Lady Raquesis. His luck held out and Glade said no more of the princess through the remainder of dinner.

It was easier, in a way, to think of every last one of his old comrades as being dead. That they'd all been swept away in one terrible wave was a thought almost too large, too terrible, to entertain, and so he'd had to somehow make it _smaller_ to be able to tolerate it. All those memories of the campaign with Prince Cuan and Sir Sigurd- of Jungby and Verdane and Agustria and icy Silesse- had been shoved away, locked up somewhere in his heart along with the vague and faded memories of his parents. Now all those memories were trickling out like blood leaking out from a bandage. Raquesis couldn't be contained anymore in a word like "the ambush" or "the massacre" or the simple shorthand of "Belhalla," and her presence meant the rest of them couldn't be so easily erased either.

In this troubled state, Finn halted beneath a painting on the stairs that he usually forced himself not to see as he walked past it four times a day. It showed Prince Quan and Princess Ethlyn and both their children, caught in one happy moment that passed from existence almost as soon as the canvas was hung. The work itself was no grand portrait, but rather a work in the more intimate style that Princess Ethlyn had liked and depicted the royal family outdoors, at play. The princess held the infant Leif in her arms, and little Lady Altena held up a garland of flowers as an offering to her brother, and Prince Quan hovered over them all- tall, strong, comforting, a figure of security.

To see this image of Quan after the catastrophe in the Yied Desert verged on unbearable. Finn glanced away and instead forced himself to look at the fifth person in the painting, the one in the background, unobtrusive, only partially lit by the dapples of sun. The figure of the servant handling the royal horses could've been modeled on anyone at court, could've been omitted entirely. But Prince Quan had seen to it that his own favored servant was placed in the scene, and so Finn also had been captured in that fixed moment of time when his lord and lady and their daughter still lived.

_Only me._

Just himself and Lord Leif, Finn amended the thought. With Lord Leif being of course far more important, so Finn should really hurry up the stairs and get back to his master's side.

Finn hoped the rest of that day passed quickly by; he was looking forward to a drink or three at the White Horse Inn.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

A/N: It's kind of like the M-rated version of "Leonster's Fall" with a dash of Nathanael West. Because I felt like it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Broken Things**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Warnings: See all previous warnings re: depictions of m/m and m/f sexual activities. Add to that consumption of alcohol. Enjoy.

* * *

"I need my own place," said Glade as they stumbled in through the door of Finn's house. "Come back to the barracks like this and it sets a bad example..."

"Mm," Finn agreed as he locked the door, a task that took more deliberate effort than it should've because he hadn't, in fact, stopped at three drinks.

The buttons of Glade's shirt didn't come off much easier once they'd gotten upstairs, and Finn found himself staring for too long at the triangle of Glade's half-exposed chest before Glade prodded him to keep going with the buttons. Glade turned out not to be in a much better state, as he spurted into Finn's mouth before either of them were ready for it.

"You always spit it out," Glade commented as Finn dealt with the sudden ending of their session. "It almost makes me feel unwanted."

"I think you drank too much tonight."

"What, you can _taste_ it?" Glade's dark amusement at his own poor performance only lasted a moment, though; in a more contrite tone he added, "Yeah. That wasn't so good. Give me a moment."

He stretched out on the bed then. Finn joined him, not a little disappointed and fully anticipating they'd both just drowse off, enervated by the humid summer air. But Glade kept to his word and before long his hardened cock was pressing against Finn's leg. Finn rolled over to give Glade accommodation between his thighs, and Glade held up through the ensuing tumble until well after Finn had gotten his own satisfaction.

After that, they did both drift to sleep for a short spell.

"Why do you still keep those old boots?" was the first thing Glade asked when they were conscious again. Finn lifted his head to better see the pair of boots Glade meant, the ones standing off in a corner beside the tall-backed chair he never used for anything.

"They're still too fine to discard..." They didn't fit and hadn't in years, but the leather remained in fine condition and the soles were perfectly sound. _And Prince Quan got them for me_, Finn added to himself.

"Give 'em to one of the apprentices. You might be able to find one small and skinny enough."

"I really should." By which Finn meant that he quite likely wouldn't.

"Speaking of our brave future knights, I'm taking the third-years out for field training this weekend," Glade said, as casually as though they'd been sorting weapons in the inventory shed for the past hour. "Get out of the city for a couple of days, catch some fish, sleep under the trees... almost as good as a furlough."

"Sounds great," said Finn. Furloughs from duty were almost unknown now, thanks to the constant state of readiness for war that followed Lord Quan's death. "I wish I could join you."

As he spoke, Finn wondered why it was that he _couldn't_ join Glade and the apprentices. Surely he- with three years of combat experience from one end of Jugdral to the other- could provide some insight into _field training. _

"All right. I've got to be going..." Glade was now in the process of buttoning up his shirt.

"You should keep on wearing black," Finn said, for Glade had only adopted it in the wake of Quan's death. Like Raquesis, he carried off the stark attire a little too well. "It does suit you."

Glade just shot him an oblique look.

"Isn't every coat in your wardrobe exactly the same?"

Finn averred that they were, more or less, and the night ended like any other, with the sound of Glade's footsteps on the stairs and the _click_ of a latched door.

"I hope he does get his own place," Finn said to himself as he surveyed the disorder of his bedroom. "Then I won't be left to do the cleaning every single time."

-x-

"He looks like Ethlyn," she said, her voice low as though this were a secret to keep from Lord Leif's ears.

Lord Leif had his father's coloring, but the delicate structure of his face, the shape and set of his eyes, all indeed came from his mother. Finn couldn't disagree, and so he hung back without comment as Raquesis held out her arms to take Lord Leif from his nanny.

"Oh, you pretty little boy," she said. Leif responded to the positive attention with a smile and they appeared to be instant friends.

Technically, Finn was there to guard Lord Leif in the event that the prince's visitor posed a threat or a nuisance... never mind that Lady Raquesis was the closest thing to a family friend that remained to Lord Leif. She'd known Prince Quan and Princess Ethlyn both well before they were married, after all. So it was right, in a way, that Raquesis should be there now in the royal nursery with its yellow walls and airy hangings, dandling Leif and showering the love upon him that a mother, auntie, or sister might have given him if fate hadn't taken all of those persons away. Lord Leif for his part showed keen interest in his visitor's bright yellow hair, and Finn was content to stand back and watch their interplay until Raquesis cajoled him into joining in.

Finn went to the gaily-painted toybox and produced some toys that once had been Lady Altena's and so the three of them played, or rather Finn and Raquesis played with the carved wooden animals for Leif's amusement. Leif pointed and smiled, tried to gnaw the tail off King Lion, cried when King Lion was taken away, and then fell asleep in the arms of Raquesis as her hair formed a golden curtain around him.

Finn watched them closely for a time as Leif slept because he knew that when he turned to put away the wooden animals he'd see yet again all the things Altena left behind- her dolls on the shelf, her books waiting for the day when Leif would want them, her wardrobe filled with clothes and hats and tiny shoes. But Raquesis couldn't stay there all the day, and so he did go and put away the toys and then took Leif from her.

"You did that so gently he didn't even stir," she said, and it seemed like a complement.

"He's used to me," said Finn, as he adjusted to Lord Leif's weight against his shoulder. He offered his free hand to Raquesis so that she might rise from the floor, but she already had drawn up her skirts in a rustle of crepe and rose without his aid.

"Thank you," she said, and the way looked into his eyes as she said it made Finn feel as though he'd done something genuinely good, something that had helped Raquesis in some way.

And so Finn came down on one side of a argument he'd been having with himself through half the play session. He asked her to dinner.

-x-

Quite honestly Finn was relieved that she'd settled for a meal at his place rather than a grand to-do at some establishment finer than the White Horse Inn. He could easily put together something quite nice- grilled meat and a salad of fresh mint and radishes from the tiny garden plot outside his door. Nice enough, at any rate.

At the same time, serving Raquesis something that was merely an improvement on camp rations didn't seem entirely right, and once his shift ended Finn went on a hunt for something that she might truly find pleasing rather than acceptable. He spent a solid hour wandering the shops of the mercantile district to the south of the castle, contemplating things like a jar of preserved plums in cinnamon syrup and pale wedges of cheese encased in glossy rinds of polished wax. He did buy one of the cheeses, but once he had it wrapped and in his hands, a piece of cheese seemed far too little a gift for the princess after all she'd been through, and Finn realized he really ought to have just gotten a bottle of wine.

At the first shop he visited, the proprietor tried to sell Finn all sorts of things he didn't want and there was nothing from Agustria in stock. At the second shop, the only Agustrian product on hand was a sweet fortified wine, something to drink after dinner instead of during it. Determined to give Raquesis a taste of her homeland, Finn bought the second-to-last bottle of it in the shop. After all these adventures in shopping, Finn had to hurry in order to have dinner ready by the time Raquesis came to call.

"So, how long have you had this place?" she asked, once she was settled in at his table. "Didn't you stay at the castle before?"

"I asked Prince Quan for permission to buy this around the time Lord Leif was born."

She nodded, and then it was his turn to ask a question, before Raquesis could get any deeper into the issue of the house. So it went through all three courses of the meal in a strange defensive sparring match. By the time he'd brought out the plate of expensive cheese and the Agustrian wine, Finn had finally learned why Raquesis was there in his presence at all. Or, rather, why she wasn't dead. She'd survived Belhalla the same way that Finn had escaped certain death in the Yied- simply by not being present. When Grannvale moved to annihilate Sir Sigurd's forces, Raquesis was already on her way northward into Isaach, where some of the women and children of Sigurd's party now lived under Prince Shanan's nominal protection.

"But if you were secure in Isaach with Lady Aideen and Prince Shanan, what led you here?"

Something in her face, in her posture, in the very _air_ seemed to change once Finn asked that question.

"My brother's son," she said, and Finn felt an utter fool for not remembering that Eldigan's unfortunate widow and heir were now in Leonster. It was easy to forget about Lady Grahnye, though, as she kept herself and her young son Ares far from Leonster's royal court. In fact, Finn had quite deliberately forgotten about her, as Grahnye had not bothered to send so much as a letter of condolence to the court at the time of Quan and Ethlyn's assassination.

"Were you able to see them?"

"My dear sister-in-law thanked me for delivering the Mystletainn and had me escorted from the premises before I got a glimpse of Ares," she replied with a brittle smile that lacked any pretense of sincerity.

"Does she truly believe that Prince Cuan and Sir Sigurd intended Lord Eldigan's death?"

"She believes a lot of things," Raquesis said only.

She held out her wineglass for him to refill, and Finn did although he remembered well enough how Lady Raquesis got after her second glass on wine. One glass had usually no effect, but the second would leave her giddy, with the bright eyes and flushed cheeks of one stricken by fever. Her brown eyes already seemed exceptionally bright.

"Your son... Delmud? He is still in Isaach?" Finn wondered if he might be tripping over some conversational rocks in asking that question. He found a lot of her story rather bizarre, to be honest.

"Yes, Aideen's taking care of him. He has a lot of playmates there- Aideen's two children, and Ayra's twins, and Sigurd's boy Seliph."

That sounded agreeable, and Finn couldn't help but think of poor Lord Leif, alone in a nursery half-filled with his dead sister's belongings.

"I didn't want to leave Delmud behind, but I couldn't risk taking him with me, and you understand that I _had_ to see Ares." Raquesis had a strange harsh edge to her voice now, as though she felt that Finn doubted her on some level and was determined to stamp out his doubts.

"Yes," said Finn, though he didn't entirely understand... save that it did matter on some level that young Ares be given his father's sword. On that point he supposed that Raquesis hadn't made a wasted journey.

Finn judged there to be another glass of wine left in the bottle, and he resolved to drink it himself even though he didn't especially like it. That second glass was having the effect on Raquesis that he expected; her color was up and her eyes glittered and she seemed to be stewing now in her own thoughts, causing Finn to feel they didn't even exist in the same space. When she spoke again there was no trace of the sweet laughing young woman who'd made Lord Leif happy that afternoon.

"How dare she keep him from me."

_Because she's his mother and can do as she likes_, Finn thought. But Raquesis seemed so upset at being denied access to her nephew that a dark suspicion entered his mind, one fueled by all the wild rumors he'd heard years before in Agustria. Even the common villagers there talked of the bond between Lord Eldigan and his spirited sister, and there'd been chatter of how Raquesis developed the habit of wearing sweeping bell-like skirts for a season and just as suddenly abandoned the practice...

Finn broke off that chain of thought before it could form any more of a tangle in his head. He had absolutely no right to judge Lady Raquesis, he reminded himself, not on any day and most certainly not when she was a guest in his home. A guest in the full mourning of a newly-bereaved widow. Whatever had gone on with Lord Eldigan three or four years ago, so much more had befallen Raquesis since then that-

"It's warm in here."

"I'm sorry," Finn said, and he forced his attention back fully to the present. "Would you like me to open some windows?"

"Only if you want the neighbors to hear."

One of her hands darted across the table and dropped onto Finn's wrist like a spider rappelling down from a tree. Finn looked down at the curious sight of that small hand with its lacquered nails pinning his own hand to the table's surface. She retracted her fingers and caused a sensation that ran from the back of Finn's hand clear up his arm to his shoulder. He flinched. Such a study in contrasts she made, what with the steel grip of her slender fingers and the velvety sound of her voice.

"Are you going to help me with my clothes?"

He wasn't really being _asked_, Finn realized. By this time in his life he did know the difference.

-x-

Someone had taken more than their fair share of the bedclothes. _Glade always thrashes around_, Finn thought. He wondered then why Glade was still there when he ought to be in the barracks, and then remembered that Glade _shouldn't_ be there at all, that Glade was off for the next two days. Finn rolled over and faced the warm presence next to him who couldn't have been less like Glade. Her breasts looked squashed and uneven, he thought. Out of everything Finn might have reflected upon when faced with a naked, sleeping Princess Raquesis of Nordion, he noticed that her breasts looked odd when she lay upon her side.

He wondered how many laws he'd broken in the course of one evening. On the one hand, Raquesis was a foreign national, and besides that she was a widow; it wasn't as though she had male relations who'd show up demanding reparation and in any event it wasn't the same grade of offense as molesting a virgin. The act merited a penance for certain, but it wasn't something that would see him _disciplined_ harshly should his superiors learn of this particular indiscretion...

On the other hand, just because something was acceptable by the standards of Sir Sigurd's army, where all manner of improbable acts were smiled upon, didn't mean that this... _something_... would find favor with Finn's superiors. At all.

Finn turned away from Raquesis entirely as he wondered what to do next. First off he wanted dearly to clean himself up, but at the same time he didn't want to disturb Raquesis. In that moment, he didn't know what to do with himself _or_ her. In the end he slipped out of bed as softly as he could manage it and began to search for his clothing. Raquesis had made a worse wreck of his room than Glade _ever_ did, and the trail of cast-off clothing led all the way to the stairs, where his belt was entangled in the railing halfway down. At the very foot of the stairs lay a puddle of blue fabric that looked like his shirt.

Finn came back into the bedroom to find Raquesis not only awake but sitting on the edge of the bed with all the poise and composure one might expect from a holy-blooded princess, clothed or not.

"Did I make you late?"

Her rough morning voice had something in it of the previous night's carnal buzz even though her eyes seemed dark and pensive again, with no liquid amber shimmer.

"No. I've plenty of time."

"Good."

She unfolded her legs and rose from the disordered bed, and Finn could only watch at the bizarre sight of the naked princess getting ready for the day. First she stepped into his pair of outgrown leather boots and took an experimental walk around the bedroom.

"Not bad," she said, and rose up on her toes to test the boot further. "Do you have any of the rest of your old uniform?"

"Y-yes."

By the time he'd these pulled these from the wardrobe she'd cast off the boots for the moment and gotten her complicated undergarments- all made of sable cloth- assembled. Finn watched as she slipped on his too-small old jacket. It did button around her, though the buttons proved awkwardly tight across her chest. The jacket completely covered her frilled chemise, and when Raquesis put on the boots again the length of her short breeches was almost enough to meet the top of the boots. The hint of bare leg she showed as she walked looked perfectly intentional.

Then she took a black satin ribbon out of one of her discarded petticoats and used it to tie back her hair.

"I could join your knights, as there's nothing else of use for me to do around here," she said.

"Are you coming to court?"

"No. I think I'll just wander around the town dressed like this."

It took a moment before Finn realized she was serious.

"I'll be late coming back tonight. There's a drill at six," he said, offering up these facts as though she might actually care.

"I can return these to you at any time," she replied.

"Yes. Any time." He knew, or thought he knew, that this hasty agreement wasn't purely over the fate of some outgrown clothes. "What should I do with the rest of these?"

He meant the remaining three petticoats and the ornate black gown that still littered his bedroom.

"Give them to the poor," she said, and was gone.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

A/N: Allegedly Ares was supposed to be the son of Raquesis and Eldigan in the beta version of FE4, which was a lot crazier than what we got in the finished_ Seisen no Keifu_. The Ares of FE4 has skills that both Eldigan and Raquesis lack, for whatever that's worth. As for what Finn and Glade are generally doing with one another, nicknames for the act include the "Ivy League rub" and the "Oxford style."


	3. Chapter 3

**Broken Things**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Warnings: See all previous warnings re: depictions of m/m and m/f sexual activities. And dubious consent.

* * *

"No, Lord Leif, you mustn't."

The heir of Leonster, having mastered walking at a precocious age, now posed a threat to everything within the little courtyard that made his outdoor play area. Flower beds suffered in the grip of his small fists and the carefully trimmed lawn now sported many a crater. Now, Lord Leif had thrown himself down at the edge of the ornamental pool at the courtyard's center and was reaching for the water.

"There are little things in the water that will bite you if you put your hand in there," said Finn, though it wasn't true, for the tadpoles were as defenseless as the clover.

"Sometimes they have to learn the hard way," said Lady Raquesis.

After several days of going about dressed in Finn's old clothes, she'd turned up at his door to hand them back.

"I can't wear those boots," he'd said, "So you're welcome to keep them if they're of any use to you."

"I will," she'd replied. "But take back the jacket, as I've a better one now."

She had, and this was at least a woman's jacket. It was second-hand and ten years out of fashion, but the smoky gray wool with accents of violet seemed passable as mourning attire. She'd then announced that she'd be coming to court to help in Lord Leif's care, since she had some skill with infants and that was the only skill she could offer the king and queen at present. And that was that.

Now Lord Leif raised a chin whose stubborn point brought a vision of Princess Ethlyn to Finn's mind.

"No touching," Finn said of the water.

Leif's face began to redden and crumple and so Finn simply lifted up the prince and carried him away from the pond to where Raquesis sat on the grass. Leif sobbed into the arm of Finn's jacket before lifting his head and showing a beguiling smile, almost as though he'd decided that sunshine rather than storm clouds might get him what he wanted. In this case he was wrong and Leif promptly began to sniffle again.

"How did you deal with Delmud when he reached this age?"

Since Raquesis was now trading on her child-rearing experience Finn considered this a fair question.

"Delmud is a little angel. Once he learned to sleep through the night he hardly cried at all." She had a blade of grass between her fingers which she tore in two along its spine as she considered it. "I think the worst trouble he ever gave me was when he cut his teeth. We had to rub his gums with whiskey then to keep him from howling."

For some reason Finn was not entirely surprised that Delmud's father Beowulf would endorse treating an infant's teething pains with whiskey. Since whiskey wasn't any sort of an option in dealing with Leif, they had to think of something else. Raquesis took the prince for a while; she put her nose to his and answered back his streams of nonsense words with baby talk of her own. Lord Leif laughed and reached again for that enticing yellow hair. When he tired of this, Lord Leif then went down on all fours and proceeded to crawl back to Finn's lap, where he fell asleep.

"You seem surprised by his antics," Raquesis observed.

"Lord Leif often surprises me. Lady Altena wasn't like this."

"Oh?" She showed him a slow-blooming smile. "I don't think you've ever mentioned her up to now."

"Lady Altena was..." Those first words came out naturally enough, but then Finn caught himself. It was, he thought, the first time he'd spoken of Altena at all to anyone other than the king and queen, and it cost him something indefinable to confess anything now. "She was curious about everything, but not too bold. If I let her run a little way ahead, she'd come right back. If I told her to there was something she shouldn't touch, she'd sit on her hands or hold my hand instead to remind herself not to reach for it."

Raquesis didn't ask any questions, but Finn thought her dark eyes were urging him to continue.

"It was only the day they all departed that she didn't behave. Princess Ethlyn gave her to me, and Lady Altena knew that there was something unusual going on, and it wasn't an ordinary good-bye, and she... took it very badly." Finn must have shifted position in some way that made Leif uncomfortable, because the little prince made a small unhappy sound in his sleep. "I did everything I could think of to console her and yet she cried, and screamed, and _kicked_, and finally Princess Ethlyn took her back, and said she changed her mind and that Altena could come with them..."

His eyes were stinging. Finn blinked rapidly until his vision cleared. He let his head hang down and stared into Leif's ruffled brown hair for a moment before he continued.

"I'd always assumed Prince Quan would take me along when he went back to join Sir Sigurd. I remember telling Sir Sigurd just that when we parted ways in Silesse. And yet when the time came, Prince Quan said that there were others who needed to learn how to fight, that my education was completed and there were other things I should do now, and he entrusted me with the children. And I couldn't..." He searched for the words to best sum up the futility of his acts upon the earth. "I failed in the duties assigned me because the one time when it truly mattered I couldn't keep a child from crying."

He had nothing more to say then. After what felt like several minutes of silence, Raquesis spoke.

"Your safety was a precious thing to Quan."

"I do realize that. The knowledge doesn't help any."

"No, I guess it doesn't." Raquesis stretched out in the grass in a pose that wouldn't have been ladylike- or even possible- had she not been in trousers. "I was supposed to look after Ares. I promised to take care of him, and I'm not doing a very good job of it, am I?"

"I'm sorry," he said then. "I should have remembered that before going on at length about... other things."

"No need to apologize," she said, and Finn thought she sounded bleakly amused. "I did ask, didn't I?"

-x-

Discussing Lady Altena might have been a positive and necessary thing for Finn. It _might _have been, but at the present he wasn't entirely sure. Up to now he'd discussed her only in symbolic terms, as a singular injustice and a blood-debt to be extracted from Thracia by any means necessary. He'd never discussed the little princess as a _person_, not even with Glade... and hadn't wanted to, really. Finn could join in the clamor for vengeance against Thracia with a full heart. He could _not_ bear to have others offer him sympathy over the loss of Lady Altena when they ought to have reminded Finn that, had he done his job well, Altena would still be alive. That maybe if he'd been less precious to Prince Quan, someone else would've been assigned the care of the royal children and perhaps done a better job of it. Finn himself might now be dead in the sun-scorched wastelands of the Yied alongside Quan- if Quan couldn't survive a battle it was to Finn's mind unsurvivable- but Lady Altena would be running around the castle in the company of her baby brother, and that seemed like a suitable trade for the present situation.

Until Raquesis arrived, he'd been doing a good enough job keeping all this to himself. But she showed up in her _odd_ brand of mourning with a host of shadows at her back- her dead brother and dead husband, her ruined kingdom and the sons she couldn't see (for he was now more than half certain little Prince Ares was not, in fact, _only_ her nephew). And she kept asking questions he didn't especially want to answer. She asked some more uncomfortable questions that evening.

"So how do I compare with Briggid?" Her lips grazed the base of his ear as she spoke.

"Briggid? I wouldn't know."

"So all that time you spent staring moon-eyed at the goddess of archery didn't amount to anything?"

"We had a few fencing matches together in Silesse because we were both equally terrible with a sword," he said, and hoped that Raquesis would drop the subject of his brief and bedazzled infatuation with the heiress of Jungby. Justifying what he had or hadn't done in the company of Lady Briggid was about as stimulating as darning his socks.

"Are you saying I'm the first woman you've ever enjoyed?" The way her tongue flicked at his ear sent a ripple of tension down his neck.

"Maybe," he said, tempted as he was to retaliate against the low-level malice in her blatant teasing, to tell her entirely too much.

"_May_be?" Her voice dropped to a throaty purr a moment before he felt an actual nip on his earlobe.

"Think whatever you like," he said, and prepared to let his own thoughts and memories cease flowing entirely as Raquesis took control.

"So compliant."

"Only to a point," he managed to say before she planted her lips upon his.

Finn hoped that moment would blot out his consciousness, but this time it didn't work. Maybe he needed to be something other than cold sober for her touch to overwhelm him. As it was he felt strangely disconnected from the physical reality of the bedclothes against his back and Raquesis on top of him. He noticed all the irritating moments in which her long hair fell across his face and made it difficult to breathe, and all the while he remembered things that didn't augment the experience at all. Briggid saying _I thought boys like you _liked_ this_ in her husky voice as he pulled away from her. Princess Ethlyn looking up at him with laughter in her eyes as one of her "lessons in love" went awry.

Those strange, shameful fragments of the past nearly ruined the present, and Finn's heart began racing with something drawing ever-closer to panic as he tried to think of something _else_, something that would enhance this moment with Raquesis instead of gutting it. As Raquesis darted her nimble tongue between his lips, the memory of how Prince Quan had tasted came back to him and that did the trick. He returned her kiss fully and from there the rest of it came naturally enough.

When Finn awoke, he thought it must be close to midnight. Raquesis was still curled up next to him; her luxuriant hair was matted enough to resemble straw in the moonlight, but it was still perfectly soft when Finn ran his fingers across it. He lay there for a time, listening for any church bells that might give away the hour and trying not to think about his single fumbled encounter with Briggid, the one that had given him a very strange impression of her while demonstrating that Briggid already had some odd ideas about Finn. Even if he credited that mishap to the general atmosphere of bored exiles doing unwise things in Silesse, it made him squirm a little on the inside.

The memory he focused on to displace that business with Briggid was equally strange in its own way, and maybe it should have troubled him also. Finn really didn't know what to think of it any longer.

_He shivered as the back of Prince Quan's fingers brushed against his cheek- not because it felt unpleasant, but because something so simple felt better than Finn had expected it should. He flinched a little and turned his head away from Quan's fingers, but Quan let his hands drift smoothly down to touch the scar that cut across Finn's left shoulder._

"_Look at all this abuse you've suffered on my behalf. I'm so sorry."_

_His voice, warm and resonant even when just above a whisper, and the touch of his steady hands combined to make Finn feel a small and insignificant thing, not worthy of the prince's singular attention. He forced his shoulders straight and raised his chin as though this were a review stand instead of a bedroom._

"_I would die if you asked it of me."_

"_I don't ask that of you."_

_These unexpected words caused Finn to look up, to look directly into Quan's eyes, at his squared chin and unexpectedly tender mouth._

"_I don't ask that of you." _

_As Quan's expressive fingers guided Finn where Quan wanted him, Finn might have been uncertain but he wasn't afraid. What Prince Quan _didn't_ desire of him troubled Finn more than the things Quan did want, and above all Finn wanted to be useful._

Back in the present moment Finn wrapped a strand of pale hair around his fingers and wondered if he were somehow to blame for the way they'd all ended.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

Briggid the erstwhile pirate captain strikes me as one of the more plausibly kinky Jugdral ladies. Just sayin'.


	4. Chapter 4

**Broken Things**

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

Warnings: See all previous warnings re: depictions of m/m and m/f sexual activities. And dubious consent. And depressive thoughts.

* * *

During the day, she'd be on the periphery of the royal court, half honored guest and half pitied refugee. Raquesis came and went as she pleased and used the opportunities to drop in on Finn when he wasn't expecting her- at least until he learned he might expect her any day, at any possible time. Sometimes she did assist him in keeping Lord Leif amused. Sometimes she simply wanted to talk. Most of the time, though, she came to him expecting a fucking.

They fucked in the crumbling old bathhouse and beneath an overgrown pergola. They fucked in the stables. They fucked in a closet on the same floor as Lord Leif's apartments. Most of these encounters didn't last a quarter of an hour. She'd undo his trousers, he'd hike up her skirt, and it'd be over so fast that Finn didn't even know why they felt it was worth the risk of being caught.

In the event they did get caught, Finn intended to plead madness.

This particular evening, they'd overcome these exhibitionist leanings and were making love like civilized people- in her house and on a bed, not standing up in some dank closet or balanced on the back of a horse. She was spread out before him, her hair flowing across the pillows and her rosy nipples aimed at the ceiling.

She felt like gelatine inside, Finn thought as he stroked her with two fingers. Slippery and smooth like the fancy concoctions at Agustrian banquets. He tried to think of something more appropriately romantic, of rose petals moistened by dew and other images from song, but his thoughts kept drifting back to blobs of gelatine.

It got everywhere. Love-making with her left a glistening trail. There was so much of this stuff that it seemed their bodies rarely generated the kind of heat that he'd expected. They didn't generate much tonight, at least not as Finn felt it; he slipped inside of her without facing any resistance from her flesh or muscle, and when he began to thrust she responded with a stifled giggle.

"What's funny?"

"I had a sudden thought of this bakery in Zaxon. They made these odd little bread rolls tied in a knot, like a pair of folded arms. I don't know why that popped in my head just now."

"Ah," he said, not bothered at all by the idea that Raquesis was thinking of bakeries in Silesse when they were supposed to be making love. For all he knew, she was thinking of Lord Eldigan every night they spent together. If anything, it relieved him to hear her mind was on other things; that meant Finn didn't have to be troubled so much over his own thoughts whenever their bodies were joined.

-x-

"She has a smile that promises things," said Glade as they walked back from another lengthy session at the White Horse.

"What kinds of things?"

"I don't know. She looked at me once and I wasn't sure if she was going to try to seduce me or if she was going to call for me to be hauled off and shot."

Finn wondered for a moment if this might be a joke, but the sour turn to Glade's mouth indicated no joke was meant. Glade had nothing more to say on the subject of Raquesis, at least until they reached Finn's door and Glade made to turn and depart.

"Aren't you coming in?"

"I wasn't planning to," said Glade, and Finn- his hand already upon the door- felt a scrabbling moment of something like panic as he looked back at his friend.

Was Glade trying to tell him that something had changed, that things had to be different now? Because of Raquesis?

"Eh, I'm not needed anywhere tonight," Glade said after a moment, even as Finn was vowing to himself to tell Raquesis _no_ the next time she popped up looking for amusement. And then things were normal again, with the two of them rushing up the stairs and Finn pulling at the buttons of Glade's black silk shirt. Glade's arm looked more impressively contoured than Finn remembered, and Finn wondered if Glade hadn't been putting in additional workouts when Finn was off engaged... elsewhere.

"And use some oil this time," Glade said as Finn pushed him down onto the bed. "Last time I was pretty sore afterward."

"Sure."

Even with a slick of oil to lessen the friction between their thighs, there was far more heat in Glade's taut body than Finn ever got out of Raquesis in her gooey softness. Finn wasn't desperately trying to summon up images of romance when he felt the stubble on Glade's cheek against his lips or Glade's firm shoulders flexing beneath his fingers. Soon enough they'd reversed position so that Glade was the one pinning Finn to the bed, and the sheer abandonment of letting Glade take control was nothing at all like the rote procedure of giving Raquesis a ride.

Even as Finn left an incipient bruise on Glade's collarbone with his lips, a question that couldn't be suppressed any longer rose up and he had to break free and voice it.

"Can't you go deeper?"

Finn saw Glade's eyes narrow in the dim evening light.

"Huh? Deeper how?"

"You know... inside."

"Oh, that. Yeah, we can give it a try."

Prince Quan had always used the bed, but Glade never pretended to be anything but a common military man in the bedroom and Finn didn't _want_ him to put on airs of being Quan anyway, so they did it up against the wall with no more ceremony than reckless boys in the barracks. Glade hesitated for a moment before committing himself fully, but Finn was already seeing flashes of green and blue light behind his eyes just from Glade's hesitant prodding.

"Go on."

"Really?"

"Do it!"

After that, Finn didn't have the ability to form words, not until things were done and Glade was cleaning himself up. Glade was rougher than Quan, lacked Quan's delicate touch, but if anything Finn enjoyed himself more for it. Everything almost hurt, or maybe it did hurt, and that was just fine.

"Thank you," he said, between two jagged breaths.

"I'm just kind of surprised you liked all that," Glade replied as he glanced up from the soiled rag in his hand.

Finn wanted to say that the explosions of colors in his head might have been the best single experience he'd felt in years, but Glade looked skeptical enough of the whole mess that he didn't.

"It was indescribable," he offered.

"That covers a whole range of experiences," said Glade.

For the rest of the night, both before Glade took his leave and long after, Finn couldn't shake away the feeling that, this time, they'd perhaps gone a little too far.

-x-

Raquesis met him in the street in the morning; they walked together through the castle gates and then took a meandering path. Patches of mist hung ghostlike above the earth, making the familiar sights a little eerie. They took a detour by the practice yard and paused to watch as Glade led his third-years through their morning calisthenics.

"That's your friend? I've seen him once or twice before."

"That's Glade, yes."

"He has beautiful calves," she murmured.

The plain gray costume of the exercise yard didn't suit Glade the way his black shirt did, but the short trousers did show off his calves, and Finn acknowledged the truth in her statement.

"Such gloomy days," she said as they doubled back, headed for Lord Leif's apartments.

"It's fitting enough, given the times."

Autumn always did seem to last more than its share of the year in Leonster, stretching from the first cool nights at the summer's end to well past the official start to winter. It would seem gloomy to her, though; in Agustria it was summer that outstayed its welcome, as three unbroken months of blue skies with no trace of cloud left one longing for a good hard rain.

Today, the skies hinted at a rain that never came, and by ten that morning the fog burned away in patches to show elusive glimpses of the deep blue sky beyond. They took Lord Leif for a walk beyond the confines of his little courtyard to a garden that Princess Ethlyn had favored during her too-brief time in Leonster. Some lilies she'd brought from Chalphy were still in bloom; Finn held up Lord Leif so the prince could sniff at the blossoms that his mother had liked so much. Leif was not terribly impressed by the exotic lilies and instead plopped down onto the path and did his best to earnestly explain to them some thing whose grave import was encoded in a string of "fa," "ba," and "da."

"Lord Leif thinks we should have brought along his red bird," said Finn, referring to a soft toy the prince favored in recent months. "He's right and I'm sorry we didn't."

"If you say so. All I got out of it is that he thinks you're his father," said Raquesis as they both settled down on the ground at Leif's level. "Oh, don't look like that. It only makes sense; he sees more of you than almost anyone, including his own grandfather."

"We've been trying to teach him otherwise. He's shown portraits of his parents every morning and night so he knows their faces." And yet, Lord Leif still reached out for his nanny when asking for "nana" and hadn't once said the sacred word "mama" in response to Lady Ethlyn's portrait.

"Leif loves you," she said then, even as Leif settled into Finn's lap with a satisfied grunt.

"He shouldn't."

"It doesn't make you feel a least a little bit proud?" He didn't answer, didn't look at her, and when she spoke again her voice sounded less collected. "Well, then, how does it make you feel?"

"Inadequate."

"The Finn I remember from Silesse had more spirit than this."

"The Finn you remember has been idle so long he doesn't know his own purpose. Maybe if we move against Thracia he'll recover some of that spirit."

Perhaps he didn't entirely believe that himself, though. That might be why he was busy scrubbing a yellow dusting of pollen off Lord Leif's cheek while Raquesis spoke to the back of his head.

"You really want another war?"

"It seems we're getting a war whether we want it or not, and if we're to have a war then I want to win it." In case that wasn't unequivocal enough for her liking, he added, "I want to tear a hole through King Travant's gut and watch him die like an animal."

"Sounds fair," she offered. She'd taken one of the lily blossoms and had pulled it apart while they spoke, and now she let the mangled petals slip between her fingers. Finn looked at the rust-red remains of Ethlyn's lilies and decided that this was something he quite liked about Raquesis. She understood vengeance.

She understood what was necessary.

That said, on the small scale of their daily tasks Raquesis wanted something other than bloody revenge. Tonight she wanted a dinner, a proper evening dinner like the nobles had in Agustria, and this time he was happy to give it to her... not least because it wasn't an invitation into a closet or some abandoned building. They met at a smart place quite unlike the White Horse, one with foreign wine in the cellar and where the serving girls were probably not prostitutes. They were seated at the nicest table, the one beneath a small balcony draped in greenery, and for a moment it was almost like the good days in Agusty when they were all heroes.

They had the imported wine, which was good enough, and they ordered the dish this establishment was known for, beef wrapped in pastry. As they waited for the meal, sipping red wine from Miletos, the conversation stayed far from topics like the imminent war and the prospect of gutting King Travant, and far from the tangled string of tragedies that led a princess of Agustria to this improbable dinner in Leonster.

Finn had the thought that Raquesis looked especially pretty, with color in her face that matched the the froth of lace around her neck, white and pink like berries mashed into cream. The colors kept distracting him and it took a long moment before Finn realized the import of that band of lace. She'd laid off mourning entirely. Not a scrap of gray, or black, or even violet- just a soft blue dress edged in lace and colorful jewels in her ears.

"Is this a celebration?" Finn sorted through his memories for some anniversary of note that he'd blanked upon and came up empty.

"Maybe," she said, and offered him that cryptic smile that "promised things," as Glade put it. She then confessed to him that she was carrying a child, with said child due in a scant five months.

"I didn't want to trouble you until I was certain," she said.

Finn heard himself promising to marry her straightaway, heard it as though he were sitting at another table and watching some other person say what had to be said. He wasn't shocked, though, nor even surprised. He had no right to be surprised; what did he think the end result of all those furtive encounters in the dark might be?

After this revelation they had the roast beef with small mushrooms tucked under the crust and Raquesis insisted on a syllabub for dessert. Finn supposed it was all good, as Raquesis seemed happy, but by the time they left the restaurant he couldn't recall how any part of the meal had tasted. The syllabub had been very pretty, crowned with coils of sugar and candied violets, and that was all he remembered. Once he'd escorted his new fiancee to her home and dropped her off with a kiss, Finn stood a while in the street beneath the linden trees contemplating the shape of his own house in the darkness.

"I didn't realize when I asked to buy this place that I'd end up in more trouble instead of less."

That came out wrong, he decided, or at least it didn't express the scope of "trouble" properly. Wanting some _space_ away from Quan and Ethlyn and from the burden of being on call every hour of the night no matter what his formal duties were just wasn't of the same magnitude as the sort of trouble he and Raquesis were presently in.

"Sometimes, I think I must do these things because..."

_Because I don't much like myself._

He tried to cut the thought off before it formed silently in his head, but the thought materialized anyway, and once it existed he couldn't argue with it. If, in that moment, the street had opened up into a vast yawning chasm and the houses and the linden trees had all slid down into the void- and Finn with them- he might have been pleased by this.

But then, there was the baby to consider.

There always was something.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

A/N: In my headcanon, Finn got the house in the first place because being Quan's pet really was kind of problematic and he wanted to establish some degree of independence from his master. And then he felt even worse about Quan'n'Ethlyn meeting their untimely end.

I also don't find him particularly straight, but I think he can be talked into things when faced with a strong enough personality. Raquesis certainly has that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Broken Things**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Warnings: Nothing much in this chapter, really. If you made it this far you're home-free.

* * *

King Calf gave his blessing to the marriage; Queen Alfiona even seemed pleased by this turn of events. They still couldn't be wed for a fortnight, of course, as the church needed the time to determine there was no impediment to the marriage. Finn wasn't even sure how the church might go about it- would they truly be checking with authorities in the ruins of Agustria?

"You look happy," he said to Glade one evening, five brief days after the revelation from Raquesis. They were in the storehouse taking an inventory of supplies for the cavalry; Finn had been taking pains to spend more time with Glade doing mundane activities instead of only seeing his lone close friend after hours.

"I am. I finally have enough to put down for a house." Glade glanced up from his checklist and said, "Smile. You're getting married to a princess."

"Yes, and now half the court is looking at me like I've grown a tail."

"Sure they are. It's the sensation of the year. They're saying now that the whole reason she came down here was to find you."

Finn set down the saddle blanket he'd been examining for shoddy workmanship.

"Who's saying that? It isn't true."

"It doesn't matter if it's true. The story now in court is she was madly in love with you from the start and crossed half a continent to find you. This says some awfully impressive things about the calibre of men we have here in Leonster, so everyone's pleased with you and wishes you the best."

"It wasn't like that at all. Don't they know she was married to somebody else?"

"Nobody cares," said Glade, and he resumed checking off items on his supply list. "It's the first good story anyone's had since Prince Quan died, so can you really blame them?"

"I... I don't know."

Finn did know it made him that less likely to want to spend time with any of their fellow knights unless he had to. It was uncomfortable enough dealing with them as he was, the knight too _precious_ to send out onto the field. To have them all thinking he'd conquered the heart of a princess when said heart had always belonged first, foremost, and only to the unfortunate Lord Eldigan was more than Finn wanted to deal with.

-x-

"You have such lovely hair," she whispered into his ear as she twined a strand of said hair around her finger. "So fine and soft, and such a beautiful color. I hope the baby has hair like yours."

"Shouldn't little girls look like their mothers?"

Raquesis seemed certain the child would be a girl, and as Raquesis would prove either correct or not all too soon Finn didn't think the point worth debating. But as to the way that little girl ought to look... well, Finn didn't know. He really didn't know what to do about any of this, especially given the way Raquesis had been acting since their engagement. He didn't know what to do about this sudden outpouring of affection from her- compliments in place of tart observation, honeyed questions on what he liked and what he wanted in place of the unspoken assumption that he'd go along with whatever she desired. After all these months, was she _now_ truly enthralled by his straight nose and long fingers and the point of his chin, not to mention the color of his hair?

Finn didn't entirely believe it all. Raquesis did _appear_ in that moment like the perfect representation of a contented mother-to-be, from her sleek hair and glowing complexion to the curve of her belly- seemingly flat the week before, visibly rounded now. Her eyes, though, still looked as keen as a falcon's, less haunted than they'd been on her arrival but still ready to strike if given cause.

"What's wrong with you tonight?"

She sounded more like usual self then.

"Your husband- Beowulf," Finn corrected himself, for avoiding the man's name was silly and pointless. "He is dead?"

"I can only imagine-" she began, and changed her entire aspect mid-sentence in response to what Finn assumed to be his own horrified expression. "No, I don't have any proof."

"So he could be alive." Escaped, in prison, changed his loyalties again for a sack full of gold...

"It doesn't make any difference, Finn. He relinquished any claim upon me even before Belhalla." That gruff note surfaced in her voice as she realized this argument wasn't convincing Finn any. "He's not going to come here and press his claims and, I don't know, challenge you to a duel to restore his honor."

Finn would've liked to say that duels and codes of honor were for _men_ of honor and not sellswords and that no one in Leonster would serve as Beowulf's second if he did try such, but that was entirely beside the point.

"If he survived Belhalla he might well come this way. He's from Conote and he knows you were supposed to be in Leonster."

"He _will not come_," she said, and then added in a softer tone. "It's all right, Finn. It's really not a problem."

"It is to the church," he said. To take another man's wife was as clear-cut a transgression as anything Finn ever had contemplated. It went against the laws of the church as surely as stealing. A surely as murder.

But Raquesis swore she was free and Beowulf likely was dead in any event, and Finn really didn't see any other option before him. _You probably should have asked about Beowulf before getting her with child, _he reminded was nothing to do but to add adultery and bigamy to the surprising list of misdeeds committed over the last few months. And if the church couldn't turn up evidence of Beowulf on its own, Finn was simply not planning to tell them.

Finn couldn't shake the sense that he was now swimming against a metaphorical current in waters well over his head. In a last-ditch effort at some kind of salvation, he stopped beneath that portrait on the stairs he so often pretended not to see.

"Lord Quan, please... I ask for your blessing in this."

In that moment it seemed to Finn that he wanted this benediction as badly as he'd ever wanted anything in his life. But of course there was no word in answer, no reassuring hand upon his head, no arm offered to which he might cling for dear life.

-x-

"I'll be leaving early today, Lord Leif, and then I won't be back for two more days. You mustn't give your poor nanny any trouble until I come back."

Lord Leif, of course, did not comprehend the gravity of Finn's early departure that day. The prince had spent a thoroughly contented morning running around the second-storey galleries and had even been treated to a carefully supervised "sledding" session on the stairs, and at the moment he was all smiles. Finn did find himself holding the little boy close for a moment longer than usual, though, before he turned Leif over to his nanny and left the royal apartments. Glade, decked out in the full finery of his dress uniform, was already waiting for him down in the courtyard.

"Hurry up. We'll have to work fast to get you home and dressed up properly and then to the cathedral. I can't believe you even put in a half day this morning."

"Why not attend work? The ceremony isn't until four," Finn replied, and Glade just shook his head.

"You do have a different way of going about things," said Glade as they headed out the main gate of the castle.

Finn was in his proper place by the altar in the Crusaders' chapel of Leonster's great cathedral at twenty minutes to four, though. The low autumn sun threw splashes of color along the floor and the walls and Finn looked down to find the emblem of Crusader Hezul projected down at his feet.

Hezul, ancestor of Raquesis.

Finn stared up at the window honoring the Twelve and thought of the improbable journey of the last four years as he waited for the minutes to pass, of all the great men and women who'd brought to life all the light and vivid color of that window. Prince Quan and Princess Ethlyn. Lord Sigurd and Lord Eldigan. Prince Lewyn and Lord Claude. Lady Briggid and her sister Aideen. Princess Ayra and her nephew Shanan. The other Crusaders' heirs, so many of them now dead, so many of them falling to one another in the terrible bloodletting. And now, at the end of it all, there was King Travant waiting over the mountains in Thracia, Emperor Arvis and his empress reigning over bloodstained Belhalla... and Raquesis, due to appear any moment for this _most_ improbable wedding.

The piper started playing and there Raquesis was_, _robed in not virginal white but the same buttery color as his old pair of boots, with a sweeping skirt and billowing sleeves. A wreath of asters and the last of the autumn's roses sat upon her hair like a crown and one of the young ladies at court who'd been attached to Princess Ethlyn carried her train. For all that Finn had seen Raquesis every which way in the last few months, as she swept down the aisle he found himself quite unable to look away.

"She really is something," Glade muttered, and Finn couldn't muster up anything in way of acknowledgment.

He did find his voice in time for the vows, though, and his hands were controlled and steady as he took the ceremonial ring from Glade and slipped it on his bride's small finger.

"By this ring I am bound to thee, for the rest of my life and in the world to come."

And they kissed beneath that resplendent window with the light of the Holy Twelve washing over them.

-x-

The two-day furlough was really an indulgence, Finn thought. He hadn't asked for it, hadn't possessed the nerve to turn it down when the king granted it, and so now he and Raquesis got to sit at home for two days pretending to have a honeymoon when they'd clearly already gotten to know one another.

Raquesis took to their bed even earlier than usual, claiming fatigue on account of the baby.

"She's been kicking up a storm all evening. I think she's going to turn out more fierce than the boys."

Finn pretended not to even hear the admission of what he'd already guessed, though Raquesis noticed the slip the instant after she'd said it and tried to cover herself by pointing out again how placid little Delmud had been. He wondered how long she'd keep up the pretenses. It might be forever, he thought.

She yawned prettily and then placed her lips against his cheek.

"Goodnight, my love."

"Goodnight," he said back, wondering when she'd started to _love_ him, and what he'd possibly done to earn it, and what in the world he was to do with her love now that he had it. Return it, he supposed, though in that moment Finn didn't know how he might go about it. Perhaps it was only something she said to those she married. He wondered if Beowulf had entertained any illusions about her love before "relinquishing" her.

_Just go along with it, _an inner voice said to him as Raquesis rested her fair head upon his shoulder as they lay together in what was now their blessed marital bed._ Step into the myth that she's loved you and only you, and she abandoned her first husband and crossed a desert to find you, and that everything now is right and as it's meant to be._

But none of that was right.

_It's what everyone wants, isn't it?_

Why did anyone care what he did in the first place?

_You heard what Glade said. It's the first good thing anyone's heard since Quan died. _

Well...

_A nice romantic story with a happy ending is just what the people need now to keep up morale. It's useful. Isn't that all you ever asked to be, anyway- to be of some use?_

I guess...

_Then go with it._

There wasn't any better option before him. Finn closed his eyes, settled himself against the warm weight of Raquesis, and fell asleep in the certainty that everything was not going to be all right on the morrow.

**The End**

* * *

A/N: That's Selphina carrying the train at the wedding. Also, this is DONE and out of my head aside from the outtakes. Whew.


End file.
